Buteogallus borrasi Arredondo, 1970
Giant Cuban hawk, Borrás’s hawk, Gavilán de Borrás
Taxonomy & Nomenclature
Synonym/s: Aquila borrasi Arredondo, 1970; Titanohierax borrasi Arredondo, 1970
Conservation Status
Extinct
Last record: Late Pleistocene?
Distribution & Habitat
Cuba
Biology & Ecology
Hypodigm
Holotype: DPUH 1250 (left tarsometatarsus lacking distal end)
See (Suarez & Olson, 2007) for a comprehensive list of material referred to this species up to 2007.
Media
References
Original scientific description:
Arredondo, Oscar. (1970). Nueva especie de ave pleistocénica del orden Accipitriformes (Accipitridae) y nuevo género para las Antillas. Cienc. Biol. Univ. La Habana, ser. 4, 8: 1-19.
Other references:
Arredondo, Oscar and Olson, Storrs L. (1976). The great predatory birds of the Pleistocene of Cuba. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology 27: 169-187.
Faurby, Søren, Matthews, Tom J., Triantis, Kostas A. and Sayol, Ferran. (2026). Quantifying the unrecorded loss of avian phylogenetic diversity. Ecography 2026: e08267. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08267
Matthews, Thomas J., Triantis, Kostas A., Wayman, Joseph P., Martin, Thomas E., Hume, Julian P., Cardoso, Pedro, Faurby, Søren, Mendenhall, Chase D., Dufour, Paul, Rigal, François, Cooke, Rob, Whittaker, Robert J., Pigot, Alex L., Thébaud, Christophe, Jørgensen, Maria Wagner, Benavides, Eva, Soares, Filipa C., Ulrich, Werner, Kubota, Yasuhiro, Sadler, Jon P., Tobias, Joseph A. and Sayol, Ferran. (2024). The global loss of avian functional and phylogenetic diversity from anthropogenic extinctions. Science 386(6717): 55-60. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adk7898 [Supplementary Materials; Dryad dataset; Zenodo codeset]
Matthews, Thomas J., Wayman, Joseph P., Cardoso, Pedro, Sayol, Ferran, Hume, Julian P., Ulrich, Werner, Tobias, Joseph A., Soares, Filipa C., Thébaud, Christophe, Martin, Thomas E. and Triantis, Kostas A. (2022). Threatened and extinct island endemic birds of the world: Distribution, threats and functional diversity. Journal of Biogeography 49(11): 1920-1940. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14474 [Appendix S1 (.docx); Appendix S2 (.pdf)]
Orihuela, Johanset. (2019). An annotated list of late Quaternary extinct birds of Cuba. Ornitología Neotropical 30: 57-67.
Sayol, Ferran, Steinbauer, Manuel J., Blackburn, Tim M., Antonelli, Alexandre and Faurby, Søren. (2020). Anthropogenic extinctions conceal widespread evolution of flightlessness in birds. Science Advances 6(49): eabb6095. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb6095 [Supplementary Material (Data File S1)]
Suárez, William. (2001). A reevaluation of some fossils identified as vultures (Aves: Vulturidae) from Quaternary cave deposits of Cuba. Caribbean Journal of Science 37, 110–111.
Suárez, William. (2020). The fossil avifauna of the tar seeps Las Breas de San Felipe, Matanzas, Cuba. Zootaxa 4780(1): 1-53. [Abstract]
Suárez, William. (2022). Catalogue of Cuban fossil and subfossil birds. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 142(1): 10-74. https://doi.org/10.25226/bboc.v142i1.2022.a3
Suárez, William and Olson, Storrs L. (2007). The Cuban fossil eagle Aquila borrasi Arredondo: a scaled-up version of the great black-hawk Buteogallus urubitinga (Gmelin). J. Raptor Res. 41(4): 288-298.